Writing a story on emulating and expensiveness of games!

Hi! My name is Casu, and I am currently writing a story for my blog about how expensive games have gotten in recent years, and why people emulate and pirate. I am especially interested in the emulation of PS3 games, how that has developed, and why gamers are supporting and developing emulators for what is (somewhat) still supported hardware.

Any reasons why, advice, or just stories would be incredibly appreciated!

Interesting, I though games are cheaper than ever today.

An NES game in 1990 cost, on average, about $50. That’s $89 in 2013 money. Your $70 N64 cartridges in 1998 would require the equivalent of $100 today. Heck, the $50 PlayStation 2 game you bought in 2005 is worth $60, the exact price of a typical retail game in 2013.

Moreover here are all games under 10€ on Steam right now. Just on the first page we have great titles like Fallout 3, Fallout New Vegas, Life is Strange, Final Fantasy XIV, Witcher 1...

Lastly, rpcs3 in practice does not run anything in any meaningful way, and does not support piracy.

Emulation's goal is about providing a way to play games when the hw is no more provided. You will likely spent a lot more on getting a pc powerful enough than to buy the hw and all the games you want at the end of a console lifecycle. Iirc ps2 last price was 99 $ and you probably get most games for below 10.

Unfortunately consoles don't last forever and when a specific hw is no more produced it becomes more and more difficult to find one that works. Video games are considered work of art and needs to be archiveable independently of their commercial valur and emulator is one way to do it.

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BTW games were never so cheap as they are currently, at least on pc. Of course it depends a lots of the living standard of your country, but with the indie scene a lots of new game are released at 15 $ and if you wait for Steam sales you can get huge discount.

It's so cheap that it's starting to modify business practices : almost every AAA price starts to drop after 4 months so editors are trying to get as many day one buyers as possible. This means pre-order dlc, micro transaction (you can't get money on the long term otherwise)... Perceived value of game is lowered.
Of course editors may have some responsibilities in the current situation but for instance look at Nintendo : they keep high price for their game on purpose, you can't find a Nintendo game at half price even 2 years after it has been released. But they're also supported longer and they don't make a sequel each year. And gamers tend to remember them longer too.